Category: Poetry

Morning Vespers

I wipe the webs of sleep away with a washcloth and water

The coffee can yawns as I pop the lid

The scoop hisses and burrows under the ground

coffee beans

and whispers in sibilant protest as I dig it out

The brown beaten seeds spread their grains across the brown filter

and the river of tap water runs through the percolator pipes

The seeds are leeched of their chemicals, reluctantly released

This is the second death

And through the darkened carafe glass is my temporary salvation

And in the wraiths of steam that rise from the cup

in the light of the rising sun

are the

Morning Vespers

My answered prayers

I live to see the caffeinated

New Day

again

Tilting at the Windmills of My Mind

Clusters of Butterflies

Torrents of Bats

Clear Pretty Blue Skies

Swarming of Gnats

Murdering Dogs

Laugh-n-Play Kids

Wallowing Hogs

Warm Coffee Lids

Friends who’ve forgiven me

Friends who’ve betrayed

Friends who’ve abandoned me

Friends who have stayed

Women who swing their hips

Women who don’t

Women who’ll lay with me

Women who won’t

Enemies  Frenemies

Besties and spouses

Living in tenements

Dreaming of houses

The Creak of  Old Windmills

The Flower that Wilts

The Strength of my Youth fades

The Jousting Lance Tilts

The Windmills keep turning

I don’t quite know how

I fought them all Bravely

But I’m

Leaving

Now.

© Alfred W. Smith Jr.

December 29th, 2014

Tilting at the Windmills of My Mind

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Sleep, children. ( dedicated to the innocent victims of madmen)

Sleep, children.
The cowards who’ve stolen your childhood will pay.

Sleep, children.
For now with your friends you will no longer play.

Sleep, children.
Your parents must carry your bodies away.

Sleep, children.
Tomorrow for you will not be a new day.

Sleep, children.
And know that you will always

be loved.

© Alfred W. Smith Jr.
December 17th, 2014
Sleep, children.
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A Thread of Human-ness

We all have

Uniqueness

in

Common

And

Conform

in

our striving to

be

Individual

© Alfred W. Smith Jr.

November 28th, 2014

A Thread of Human-ness

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“Colored” Signs and White Robes (No, I Will Not…a poem for Black youth)

Don’t tell me to ‘get over it’ because it makes YOU uncomfortable,

The founding of a nation on blood and chains should make you uncomfortable!

And though the institutions no longer exist, the attitudes of slavemasters yet prevail, 

Freely and proudly expressed!

So be it, but let this be too: the history of my ancestry DOES NOT BEGIN with bondage,

but the history of my ancestry HERE does, and so I will celebrate the TRIUMPH of their SURVIVAL, so that

I might sit here today and use this machine to type these words:

You will no longer brand me ‘animal’

or grind my dignity under your heel.

You will have no access to my joy

And I reject your invective as the source of my sorrows.

I do not seek your approval to grow and thrive and be.

I have no master in you, and you have no servant in me.

I will be free, in spite of, not because of, your documents that proclaim the very liberty for all men 

you’ve revealed to be a lie. 

You don’t get to define me, if you don’t want to know me.

You don’t get to classify me, when you don’t want to live next to me.

You don’t get to objectify me, because I am not here to amuse you.

You don’t get to nullify me, and say I shouldn’t be here: WE are the nation’s only IMPORTED immigrant.

I will not get over the chains I’ve never worn,  not get over the whippings, lynchings, beatings, rapes, torture, castrations, hunting hounds and K9 cops, bombings, hoses, “Colored” signs, white robes, shotguns, fires, burning crosses, burning bodies hanging from trees and bridges and tossed in rivers, broken and dismembered, and soil soaked in blood and lost years behind bars from false accusations I’ve never experienced, because I stand on the remains of all the rubble and remains of those lives; they are yet a part of me, and whether or not you “understand” it, it is nevertheless so.

And so I say again: I am FREE

but I, and my children, and their children

will not EVER

‘get over it.’

They Have to be Invited In

They have to be invited in

After they ring the bell

I did, but didn’t know she’d make

my life a living hell

And ever when they lie with you

They lie to you as well

I thought the difference would be plain

But no, I couldn’t tell.

She left a desiccated heart

Inside a broken shell

© Alfred W. Smith Jr.

2014

They Have to be Invited In

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Slaying Songs: A Reaver’s Hymn

Slaying Songs: A Reaver’s Hymn.

Slaying Songs: A Reaver’s Hymn

In the winter cold I rise

Look the killer in the eyes

Spilling blood I claim my prize

Singing slaying songs.

In the woodlands dark and sere

Where the creatures creep in fear

I will light a fire here

Singing slaying songs.

In an empty castle’s shell

Haunted by the fiends of hell

Axes toll a killing knell

Singing slaying songs

On the ocean’s tide they come

Chests of gold and casks of rum

Think I’ll go and get me some

Singing slaying songs.

Through the city streets I walk

See the demon-shadow stalk

Now his outline’s drawn in chalk

Singing slaying songs

On the land or on the sea

Doesn’t matter much to me

Last thing that you  hear will be

My savage slaying song.

© Alfred W. Smith Jr.
2014
Slaying Songs: A Reaver’s Hymn
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Quest

A knight set out upon a Quest

The Lion blazon on his chest

To rescue him a maiden fair

From wizard’s cold and darkened lair

“Fair maiden,” cried he, “I have come

to take thee back to thy kingdom.

“We must make haste! ‘Tis dusk I see

and we have many miles to flee!”

The great oak door that barred his way

Did not yield to the axe’s sway

“Fair maiden, do not take a fright.

I think the moon shall rise tonight.”

He swung until his arm was sore

And in due time broke down the door

He burst inside and flushed deep red

For there he saw upon the bed

The maiden and the wizard locked

And both of them complete defrocked

And breathing hard and laughing soft

within the wicked wizard’s loft

She started up. “Get out!” she cried,

“And tell not what you here espied!”

“But maiden…” cried he, sore and vexed

Not seeing she was oversexed

“Get out, you empty armored head

or ‘pon the road they’ll find ye dead.”

And this was what the wizard said

And so the brave knight turned and fled

The knight, his courage gone astray

Vowed he would Quest no more that day

that month, that year, that century!

He still lives with the memory

Of lovely woman’s treachery.

© Alfred W. Smith Jr.

Quest / Day of the Dark Full Moon (compilation)

December 10th, 1983

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Winter Woods

It started again.
That damn twinge of melancholy that quivered
in her everytime she saw a leaf fall.
How she hated the cold months.
Hated them!

Coming with their inevitable fury, trapping her.
She would bundle up, drink coffee, anything to try and stay warm.
But somehow, they always got through her defenses.
Catching her up with their swirling winds, nipping at her.

She would take flight.
And they would follow.

And she would find herself naked and alone in a blasting wind of white
attacking the bare trees and stubborn pines,
and they would laugh at her.
She was trapped again.

Caught up in the majesty of it. Calling her.
Haunted by the wind’s lyrical melodies. Calling her.
She would reach, and touch, and feel and taste the snow,
laughing with all the giddiness and abandon of the little girl she once was,
the wind wildly tossing her hair, and she would say, very softly:

“Be still.”

And the winds would die.
And the snow would drift gently.
And the stars would glitter tranquilly in
her eyes.

She was held in reverence here.
They always had to remind her.

She was
a goddess.

© Alfred W. Smith Jr.
Winter Woods / Day of the Dark Full Moon (compilation)
December 10th, 1983
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